


With Muffled Drums

by ariadne83



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-05
Updated: 2010-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-11 12:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadne83/pseuds/ariadne83
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thanks to Michael Lorne is on his own now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Muffled Drums

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lornefest #2 for [slashing_lorne](http://community.livejournal.com/slashing_lorne)  
> Prompt: Lorne/writer’s choice- (Last Man tag) General Lorne actually had a real reason why he allowed/was hoping Rodney could change the timeline  
> **A/N:** I ultimately intend for [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7621) [series](http://archiveofourown.org/works/58764) to have a happy ending but this is an alternate future

  
They survived three years apart, in two different galaxies. They survived Goa’uld and Replicators (twice over) and the Ori and the Wraith.

Well, most of them, anyway. The one they’d labeled Michael Kenmore made everything go straight to hell in ways the expedition could never have predicted. Megalomania combined with a sense that he’d been betrayed by everything – everyone – he’d ever known had turned Michael dangerously unpredictable. It all went to shit after Sheppard disappeared, and they paid the price for it in the tally of the dead. Teyla, countless civilian casualties - the Taranans, the Athosians, expedition members, any planetary populations that crossed Michael’s radar - not to mention pilots and ground troops. And in the end, Aiden was one of them.

For the longest time he kept looking for Aiden’s name on mission reports. After all the hopeless situations they’d been in, and the number of times each of them had been MIA, it took him weeks and weeks to remember consistently that he’d lost Aiden for good this time. It didn’t seem possible, so for a long while Lorne had to remind himself when he got up every day that it was true.

The day he stopped needing to remind himself, it took him hours to notice. When he finally did, he locked up his office and sat inside with the lights off, crying like a baby for two hours straight. It didn’t do anything much to help; he just ended up with a stained uniform and a sinus headache, and Aiden was still dead and gone.

Sam Carter was one of the few people who really _got_ what it was like. She and Lorne danced around each other, carefully not asking or telling, but he’d been there the day the medics brought Janet Fraisier’s body back through the ‘gate. There was no mistaking that look of raw pain, and he knew it viscerally now. Had done ever since the day Aiden’s team had failed to report back in, and Lorne had had to carry on with his job because people was counting on him, looking to him for leadership.

Sam understood, even if they didn’t talk about _why_ she understood, and they were close enough that people mistook them for a couple more often than not (saving the world as many times as Sam had apparently earned you some flexibility in terms of the regs, at least if you appeared to be straight). It was an easy assumption to go along with, even if it didn’t make Lorne feel any less of a widower.

And then Sam was gone too, commander of her very own ship, and Lorne was The Man of Atlantis. No Weir or Sheppard or Teyla to ease the burden, or give Lorne a breather so he could let himself stop and feel his losses. Woolsey tried his best but the fact that he was brand-spanking new to the galaxy made him fairly useless when it came to trade and diplomacy with established contacts. The last thing Atlantis needed in the midst of this crisis was yet another change in senior staff, but the IOA were determined to keep their paws on the city.

At least until they decided once and for all that Atlantis was a liability. Lorne returned to Earth a failure, abandoning his post in the face of overwhelming odds and bureaucratic cowardice. Maybe things would’ve been different if Sam hadn’t already gone out in a blaze of glory, but maybe not; President Hayes finally decided to clean house just before the end of his second term, either to piss off or pave the way for his successor. Lorne wasn’t sure which, because the election was a close race.

Lorne had his suspicions about why he ended up on the fast track for command at the Colorado base over Reynolds, and all of them boiled down to cynical politics. His two years on gate teams was nothing by comparison to Reynolds’ near-decade of service, but it was just enough to look good on paper. And he’d toed the party line on Atlantis (it was easy enough, since there’d been no-one left he really cared about), shook the right hands, made all the right compromises, so evidently they trusted him to head up the take-over. Maybe Lorne would’ve felt like a sell-out if he wasn’t so damn tired, but at least he was in a position to save as many good people’s jobs as possible. And if the stars on his shoulders made him feel hollow it wasn’t exactly unusual these days. He’d been smothered by looks of sympathy and concern at Sam’s memorial service, and maybe it was supposed to be the thought that mattered, but it was pretty damn bitter-sweet.

It was the last thing he really _felt_ until Rodney McKay stepped into his office years later. When McKay had finished outlining his grand plan, Lorne felt a fluttering in his stomach that was startlingly unfamiliar after all this time: hope. Existing without Aiden and moving on with his life had proved impossible, and now that he was being offered the chance to get him back Lorne didn’t give a shit what else they were un-doing.

“You really think you can make it work?”

“If I do, we won’t experience it in this lifetime. The solar flare is thousands of years from now.”

Of _course_. Because nothing was ever simple. “So I just… send you on your way and forget about it?”

“Things will be different for another you.”

“That’s real comforting, Doc,” Lorne said through gritted teeth, gripping the edge of his desk until his knuckles turned white and his fingertips started going numb.

“It’s enough for me,” McKay said quietly, and Lorne had to squeeze his eyes shut because he knew that tone of voice: bleak and lost and determined all at once. It was like losing Aiden all over again, and Lorne had to concentrate hard to keep his breathing deep and even.

“OK,” Lorne croaked out, after what felt like an age. “What do you need?”

Surprisingly little, as it turned out. Apparently McKay had learned – somewhere, somehow – to live on the bare essentials when it came to food. Lorne was pretty sure that was one of the saddest things about this whole mess. They waited until just before the end of third shift and then Lorne dialed him out personally, silently grateful that his people respected him enough not to ask awkward questions.

“Dr. McKay, you have a go.”

McKay waved absently and trundled his cases up the ramp, stopping just in front of the puddle to give Lorne a sloppy salute. “So long, General.”

And then he was gone. It was weirdly anticlimactic, and Lorne found himself thinking bitterly, _Evan Lorne, this is the rest of your life_, before he headed home to drink himself to sleep.

In the end the rest of his life it wasn’t that much longer. Five years after McKay stepped through the ‘gate the Lucian Alliance finally managed to penetrate the iris code. Their intel must’ve been exceptional (or they had yet another inside man like Telford), because they managed to get out of the ‘gate room and secure operations before the alarm even went up, and hundreds of support troops poured through the wormhole behind them (as they took great pride in telling Lorne, once he was captured).

The last coherent thought that Lorne had after they stormed into his office and put him on his knees was _finally_. A gunshot sounded, and he was heading home.  
   



End file.
